Most people who recognize the name of actor George Takei fall into two categories: those who watched Star Trek and know him from his role as Sulu, and those who recognize him as Hiro Nakamura’s father Kaito on NBC’s Heroes. However, behind those two roles is a more complicated man with a prominent voice for the rights of all people, and he’ll speak Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Tech Auditorium, in an event hosted by the Asian Pacific American Coalition.
Takei is the most prominent gay Asian-American actor in America and has gotten to that point on impressive talent, not through demeaning caricature roles. He was born five years before World War II, and as an Asian-American living in the western U.S., was subjected to life in two different internment camps during the war. In an interview with North by Northwestern, Takei said he was affected by the Yellow Peril of the time, created by newspapers, which contributed to racism following the Pearl Harbor attacks. “When others are made one-dimensional, it becomes easy to do horrible things to them,” Takei says.
After the war, he acted in school plays, but initially studied architecture at the University of California–Berkeley on the advice of his father, who was in real estate. After two years there, though, he said he had developed a case of the “coulda, woulda, shouldas.” He wanted to act, and prepared for a conversation with his father to convince him about changing career paths. “My father was prepared for this, though,” Takei says, “and wanted me to get a degree.” Takei then enrolled at UCLA in the theatre department, where he obtained a bachelor’s and master’s in theatre.
Attending UCLA was fortuitous, and got him started in professional acting. “A casting director saw me in a student production,” he says, “and that’s how I got cast in my first feature, Ice Palace.” Warner Brothers liked his performances, and put him in guest-starring roles on shows such as Hawaiian Eye. He also landed roles in films alongside Cary Grant, Alec Guinness and James Caan, until 1965, when he was cast in a small science-fiction show called Star Trek, which ensured his place in popular culture.
More than 40 years later, he landed the role of Kaito Nakamura on NBC’s popular sci-fi show Heroes, which came in a roundabout fashion. “A Star Trek fan e-mailed me about a character on the show who is a Star Trek fan,” he said, referring to Hiro Nakamura, the show’s time-and-space-bending character. “Sometime later I was called for the role of Hiro’s father, and they sent me a script.” However, the studio had sent him a script entirely in English, when he was reading for a character who speaks entirely in Japanese, he says. “They wanted me to translate it, to prove I could speak Japanese fluently.”
Though Takei’s career is going strong, he has been in the spotlight recently for showing personal aspects of his life. Since an interview in Frontiers magazine in 2005, Takei has been openly gay (though during his career he didn’t make attempts to deny it), and has been a highly active member in the LGBT community on the issue of equal rights. He has been featured many times on The Howard Stern Show before and after its switch to satellite radio, and starred in a comedic public service announcement on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in response to former NBA player Tim Hardaway’s comments regarding gay basketball players.
In recent years, Takei has appeared in many shows and films, but has been able to (for the most part) inhabit his roles instead of just being George Takei onscreen — his parts rarely mirror his personal life as a gay Asian-American. His career has demonstrated that gay actors, or Asian-American ones, don’t have to be boxed into media stereotypes. To gain equality, Takei believes there needs to be a shift “away from stereotypes to real people,” making it more difficult to pass legislation to restrict the rights of the LGBT community.
“There was literal barbed wire around Japanese-Americans, but there is legalistic barbed wire around the LGBT community,” says Takei. To him, the issue of gay marriage is not unlike the issue of interracial marriage. “The discrimination of orientation will be as oppressive to us as the racist oppressions of fifty years ago,” he said.
Takei’s career has been multi-faceted, and he has remained in the public eye for years in a different way than his Star Trek co-stars. His persona today is more like Leonard Nimoy than William Shatner; a well-respected actor and performer who is given roles for his talents instead of his pop culture significance. And it seems that his life can only get better: Just one day after the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage last week, Takei and his partner announced their engagement.